Drake: "HYFR"

Video veteran Director X talks to Jenn Pelly about Drake's "re-bar mitzvah" clip. X dishes on Lil Wayne's skateboard mayhem, where they found a synagogue to host the shoot, and why a Catholic wouldn't be allowed to have this much fun.

Director's Cutfeatures interviews with the people behind today's best music videos.

Five months ago, Drake appeared on the late-night television program "Chelsea Lately", where he fielded questions about sex, Nicki Minaj, and Judaism. "Now, you're half Jewish," the host, Chelsea Handler, asserts. "I didn't know there were any Jewish rappers." Drake responds with a smirk and easy laugh: "There are now." He then notes that fellow rapper Mac Miller is Jewish, too. "Yeah," he adds, his sarcasm building, "we all re-enact bar mitzvahs and do very Jewish things together."

And the flip joke turns out to be more of a hint in light of his recent video for "HYFR", which actually finds the Canadian MC coming of age all over again. (Miller, thankfully, is nowhere to be found.) "When I had a bar mitzvah back in the day, my mom didn't have much money," Drake explains in a behind-the-scenes clip. "I told myself that, if I ever got rich, I would throw myself a re-bar mitzvah."

The "HYFR" visual, which dropped right at the start of Passover, was handled by veteran Director X, who has worked with the likes of Aaliyah, Kanye West, The-Dream, R. Kelly, and Common over the last 14 years. The clip's re-bar mitzvah "ceremony" took place at the Temple Israel of Greater Miami and featured bagels and Manischewitz, a tallit and yarmulke, the Torah and the hora, and was attended by Trey Songz, Birdman, DJ Khaled, and Lil Wayne, who wore a panda ski mask.

"HYFR" proves to be, at times, an apt soundtrack to this unlikely setting. While the surface-oriented recklessness of the clip's reception parallels the song's freewheeling hook, there are deeper ideas about identity and memory embedded in both the video's ceremonial scenes and the song's verses. "What have I learned since getting richer?/ I learned working with the negatives can make for better pictures," he raps; draw from either side of that double entendre and you'll find grounds for recreating a formative childhood experience.

In contrast to more liberal forms of Judaism, where women are empowered with rabbi roles (according to X, a female rabbi chaperoned this shoot), the world of "HYFR" unapologetically depicts women as "bad bitches" who are reliant on men for college tuition, pills, and emotional stability. Upon reviewing the clip, the president of Temple Israel, Ben Kuehne, said, "The complete video is certainly not consistent with Temple Israel's longstanding history and reputation as a progressive voice in the Jewish Reform movement. Temple Israel does not condone any aspect of the Drake video."

Meanwhile, younger voices in the Jewish media have endorsed the clip. Jewcy's Stephanie Butnick noted its similarities to her company's "Shalom Motherfucker" t-shirt concept. "It's about young people taking ownership of their Jewish identity and engaging with it in a way that's comfortable and meaningful," she says. "It doesn't need to be super serious all the time." She lauded Drake for opening the video with the bar mitzvah's "earnest" and "less glamorous religious components."

And Dan Klein of the Jewish lifestyle magazine Tablet says the video "offers the platonic ideal of American Judaism" while also eschewing the many "kitschy and opulent" pitfalls of recent bar mitzvah portrayals in pop culture on shows like "Community", "Entourage", and "30 Rock". According to Klein, Drake's mediated world offers an antidote in that "both of his sides, Jewish and black, sit engaged."

Read on for our interview with Director X.

Pitchfork: Who thought of the concept for this video?

Director X: It was Drake's idea. He came to me a week before the shoot, and he knew what he wanted to do and when he wanted to do it. We got it together very, very quick-- in about a day. This new generation of kids really know their videos. I loved the idea. It was about time he did something like this, and I knew it would get a lot of attention.

Pitchfork: Do you think about a video's potential to go viral when you're planning a shoot?

X: That was the point behind the video. People's attention spans are not what they used to be, so we had to do something that would grab them. Luckily, Drake has something no other rapper has-- it's definitely one of the more unique videos I've worked on.

Pitchfork: Had you ever been to an actual bar mitzvah before?

X: Never.

Pitchfork: Was Drake really reciting passages in the temple scenes?

X: Yeah, he actually did, but it was very quiet, and we couldn't hear. We were being very true to the whole process in the temple. We were very clear that the re-bar mitzvah should really look like a bar mitzvah. There was a rabbi officially there to make sure everything was straight. And every Jewish crew and cast member had something to say about what's authentic and what's not the whole day long. [laughs] It was a pretty normal religious experience. We were smart about it. We weren't doing anything crazy.

Pitchfork: I read an article on a Jewish culture website saying this video marks a positive turning point for hip-hop's embrace of Judaism. Was that intentional?

C: Oh, no. That wasn't the intention. It was just: This will be fun.

Watch a behind-the-scenes video for "HYFR":

Pitchfork: Were there any memorable parts that didn't make the final cut?

X: Wayne's whole deal was definitely the craziest thing that happened that day. The film ran out when we were shooting his part, which sucked. When he breaks the vase with his skateboard, that's just the beginning of the craziness. He tips the table over and takes his shirt off, but we ran out of film just when things started getting crazy.

Pitchfork: Was Wayne's scene improvised?

X: Wayne moves on instinct. Everything Wayne does is his idea. You can't tell Wayne nothin' about nothin'. Be clear. He doesn't explain himself or take suggestions. He does what he feels like doing.

Pitchfork: Why did he have a skateboard?

X: He skateboards all the time.

Pitchfork: It was interesting to see Drake recreate his bar mitzvah soon after Nicki Minaj's Grammys performance, which had much to do with the Catholic Church-- these unexpected intersections of religion and hip-hop.

X: It's a little different. Nicki's thing was shocking, where this video is meant to be comedy. The Catholic Church isn't funny [laughs]-- they have exorcisms and big scandals and they've been responsible for all kinds of crazy things. People like Madonna have normally gone after the Church in a more shocking way, but no one has ever done Jewish.

In Jewish culture, people make fun of themselves a lot. When you think about the types of things you see about bar mitzvahs, or the movies that Jews make-- comedy is a big part of their culture.